


Beyond Gotham

by DCRedux



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types, Batman Incorporated (Comics), Beware the Batman (Cartoon), DC Elseworlds, DCU (Comics), Gotham (TV), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Batman Incorporated - Freeform, F/M, Globetrotter Batman, Gotham, Nazis, Post-Batman Begins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-25 21:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7547143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DCRedux/pseuds/DCRedux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After successfully clearing Gotham of organized crime, the mission has grown. Whether it's the foreboding castles of Europe, the jungles of Peru or the shining lights of Tokyo, evil will have no hiding place. Crime is a global issue and he is the solution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**DC Redux Proudly Presents: Batman - Distinct Similarity!**

**By Ivan Krolo**

* * *

"Be careful with those canisters!"

"I am! Stop repeating yourself like some fool!" Kaito snaps at Ryo, his face forming a scowl at his long time partner as he hands him another canister of chemicals after accidentally scraping it against the side of the roof window.

"I wouldn't repeat myself if you were more careful!." Ryo snaps back at him while placing the canister carefully into one of the three briefcases placed mere paces away from the window. "This stuff could kill us if it got out! What's the matter with you?!"

"Alright, alright! I'm sorry!" Kaito yells back from inside the lab as he grabs another canister and begins climbing back up the ladder. "I just want to get out of here, okay? I don't like being out here, **especially** not in this city."

"What," He kneels next to the opened window and smirks at his paranoid partner-in-crime. "You're afraid of this... 'Bat-Man' they're talking about? Is your grandmother's superstition rubbing off on you?"

"I'm not scared of turning into a pig after lunch if that's what you mean," Kaito climbs back up, handing another canister with more care this time. "But you must've heard the rumors, right? This guy's been going attacking everyone lately. The Irish, the Russians, the Mexican Cartels, hell, just thinking about what he did to the Italian's makes my skin crawl."

"Please," He takes the canister and places it into the second briefcase, sealing it. "Its just a bullshit scare tactic, everyone one, us included uses them. This 'Bat-Man's' just another one of those, not some demon from another world who's gonna eat your soul. Next time Arata tries to freak you out with that crap, smack him in the face."

"Wise advice," An older, sterner voice, belonging to their kyodai or 'big brother' Juro. "One I suggest you both heed, you're wasting precious time running your mouths instead of doing your job. The master abhors having his time wasted, do you wish to anger him?"

"N-no sir!" Both of them stammer in unison and begin to pick up the pace when Jino, another one of shatei or 'little brothers' assigned to form a perimeter on the nearby rooftops screams into his microphone. A blood chilling cry followed by nothing but a few moments of awkward silence for everyone there. Until another one cries out. Then another, and another. Gunshots follow suite, their noise ringing in the ears of both Kaito and Ryo as they observe split second flashes of the weapons go off all around them before falling silent, along with their bearers.

"Ryo... " Kaito whispers to his bewildered friend as frantically climbs up the ladder, and grabs his frozen friend by the shoulders. "Ryo! Snap out of it! We've gotta get the hell out of here before we're next!"

"B-but... the canisters... "He stammers barely registering the shake as he looks around the silent rooftops of the city, once inhabited by guards meant to protect them, now seemingly empty. "The boss will..."

"Won't be getting them anyhow," A new voice speaks to both of them over the frequency thought only available to Yakuza members. A low, growly voice, almost at the pitch of a whisper. "Don't bother running either, you **can't** escape me."

Despite every instinct in their bodies telling them to run as fast and as hard as they possibly can, the two instead find themselves drawn to a massive, looming shadow cast over them and onto the ground at their feet. They spin around to find **him** soaring across the sky toward them with the billboard and nightlife of Tokyo casting the aforementioned shadow of his figure on them.

Clad in a black, wing-shaped cape spread, covering everything but the protruding ears on his head, his white eyes and the Yakuza member ensnared in his choke hold. The Bat-Man throws an unconscious and beaten Juro at their feet. The two can only scream in terror as he finally comes for them.

* * *

"Fancy a spot of tea with the sandwich, Master Bruce?" Inquires Alfred as he stands at the kitchen counter of the 26-year-old corporate heir, and infamous vigilantes, Tokyo penthouse. A safe haven recently purchased by the said heir for when he has some business, in both of his personas, in the capital of the land of the rising sun.

From the shadows, the owner appears, sitting down at one of the counter chairs with a smile on his face as he slides off the bat-shaped cowl off it.

"If you ever want a change of career Alfred, teaching some thugs how to know when I'm skulking around would pay pretty well these days." He takes off the dirty, purple gloves off his hands and washes them in the sink. His voice somewhat hoarse.

"And miss all the fun of fixing you up after a nights job well done? Never, here," He hands the salami sandwich to Bruce before turning his attention to the whistling tea cooker next to him. "Eat, you need to keep your strength up."

"I don't suppose you could make me some-"

"Coffee?" He interjects, putting the steaming liquid into a cup. "At nearly 5 AM? Not a chance. Besides, tea is quite helpful for throat aches, help you could certainly use Master Bruce."

"Don't remind me," Bruce rubs the body part in question after a somewhat painful swallow. "The voice gets the job done but you won't hear me complain when Lucius finally gets that voice modifier complete."

"And how fortuitous was your latest escapade?" Alfred hands him the cup just as he finishes the sandwich. "Given by your lack of wear and tear, I'd wager it went quite well."

"They still don't believe I exist, which is fine by me," He takes a sip of the tea. "The stupider they stay, the better it is for me. The downside of them being stupid is that... Well, let's just say they aren't great sources of information. Especially the low-level grunts I stopped tonight."

"Never underestimate small beginnings, Master Wayne, great things tend come from them."

"Black Mask would agree with you," Bruce finishes his cup and rises from the chair, heading to his office with Alfred following closely behind. "At least, if the rumors about him are true. Not that I have much reason to doubt the convincing ones. He's not the first or last guy to claw his way to power from the streets."

They reach the office with Bruce halting at a painting of his parents decorating the wall. Hidden behind it, an eye scanner emits a faint light and with a clicking noise, identifies him as the genuine Bruce Wayne. The wall slides open with a click, revealing a stand for his bat suit.

"He's shrewd one," Bruce takes off the cape and cowl first. "Stealing Lambert Chemicals hidden military project to get a hold over Lamber Junior is clever. If one of those canisters got used and people found out who made it, the PR nightmare would ruin them in a matter of weeks."

"Better to have you destroy them than let the fall into the wrong hands, sir."

"No argument here," He un-holsters his yellow belt and places it at one of the stands to the side. "I might not be able to control what other companies make, but I can keep weapons like these off the market, at least."

"Something I'm sure a great many are grateful to you for, sir, even if they don't know it yet." He immediately notices the smell coming from the young master's feet as he removes his boots. "And on that, I shall get the bath ready, for all our sakes. It should give you plenty of time pick your next target once this Black Mask business is dealt with."

"I'm partial to the Bratva for now," Bruce smirks as he takes the chest piece off. "But I hear the Cartels would love to have me visit again."

"Oh I've no doubt of that Master Bruce," Alfred sarcastically quips from the office door. "After all, who doesn't love an uninvited guest who costs you hundreds of millions in illegal drugs."

"Alfred," Bruce calls out to him just before he vanishes behind the door. "Could you get a movie for me ready? Something to help me relax."

The butler gives him an even look. "You're not watching Grey Ghost or Independence Day."

"Alfred-"

"No, I believe something more... contemplative will suffice, something to soothe you to sleep, Diamonds Are Forever perhaps?"

Bruce looks his dearest and oldest friend in the eye as if he just punched him in the stomach. "That's just cruel Alfred."

His butler takes another whiff of the horrid smell spreading throughout the room and tells him one last thing before leaving it. "So is that stench, Master Wayne."

Well accustomed to his butler's witty retorts, Bruce takes no offense but merely laughs as he discards the final pieces of his elaborate suit off, delicately placing them in the small storage vault built inside the wall. Just before closing it, he glances at a copy of the newspaper article on Gotham's day of triumph, the day his alliance with James Gordon and Harvey Dent brought down organized crime in Gotham after two years of hard work.

Two years of gathering evidence, interrogation, sneaking and jumping off of rooftops all finally culminating in a healthy Gotham. One where real progress could happen without the corrupt officials and their mob bosses dragging the good people down into the gutter to die. A better future dreamed by Martha and Thomas Wayne finally taking shape on the foundations of this success. Crime still exists there, but the Gotham that made men such as Joe Chill is gone.

But there are more places like Gotham still, more Joe Chill's being made every day in every country and in every city. The mission is greater than the 8-year-old boy who wore revenge on all criminals could've possible comprehended, greater than Gotham, but that's fine. Bruce Wayne and Batman both are ready to take it on, together and on both fronts.


	2. Now in Technicolor Part 1

 

There's a distinct difference between traversing different cities from different parts of the world. An obvious thing to say but something you can't fully grasp until you've done it. Gotham embodies what many see in a standard American city through its architecture. With hundreds of skyscrapers piercing into the heavens, each of them dozens of stories tall with hundreds of smaller yet still imposing buildings in-between them. Each one a thrilling challenge to climb and glide to and from. Giving countless angles to approach a situation from offensively and defensively.

Buenos Aires, though not lacking in its own modern buildings, contains more buildings in its shanty towns than anything else. Cobbled together things that barely pass off as structures, rarely ever being more than a story tall and horribly unreliable because of their patchwork nature. Traversal in the types of cities relies less on quickly climbing them or scurrying through ventilation shafts as it does on abusing their lack of electricity to stay in the shadows on the ground level and shoddy craftsmanship for maximum effect. Whether it's smashing through a wall like some monster from Hell or preferably finding the right piece to break so its collapsing walls and ceiling get the job done for you.

Frankfurt am Main, the fifth largest and recently declared "Most Dangerous City!" in German stands somewhere in-between. Though a handful of skyscrapers stand out near the city center, the other buildings are all of an identical height, length, and design. None more than maybe 2 to 4 stories tall and a great many of them bearing an old world quality you'd never see in Gotham, barring a few exceptions like Wayne Manor.

It almost feels like a stroll traversing such a city of equal height, no time is wasted climbing dozens of stories or worrying about potential mud prints that could give your position away. A perfect location for some lightweight parkour practice for his Bruce Wayne down time.

Tonight isn't the time to think about something like that, though. Not with strange things happening not just across this city, but across the whole country as well.

"Any luck yet Master Bruce?" He hears Alfred's voice buzz in his ear as he crouches on the edge of a building, scanning the surrounding area for any homeless people sleeping or walking through the street this late at night.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," He smirks. "Unless you count me."

"I wouldn't call your nightly activities particularly odd, eccentric yes but certainly not the worst I've seen in someone as young or wealthy such as you."

"Is it eccentric if it's part of the family history?" Batman asks, once again on the move. "My great-grandfather Alan Wayne was convinced murdering owls were building nests inside his buildings and hid inside a private bunker underneath Wayne Tower."

"Another Wayne with an animal obsession, quite an interesting observation Master Bruce," Alfred muses, earning a small chuckle from his employer.

"Anything from Leslie?" He asks, returning to a more professional tone of voice through his recently acquired voice modulator built into his suits neck piece leaves nary a hint of difference between angry and casual Batman. At least, to an unaccustomed ear which Alfred is most certainly not.

At least, to an unaccustomed ear which Alfred is most certainly not. "Nothing but I cannot imagine Leslie is taking this situation any better than she did three days ago..."

* * *

**3 Days Prior, Leslie's residence**

"You really didn't need to come here to hear this Bruce, a phone call-"

"It wouldn't have been enough Leslie," He tells her with a sincere, warm smile on his face, hugging her tightly after quite a few years apart. "You're family, and I haven't seen you in years."

"Two years isn't **that** long, Bruce." She returns his smile and allows him into her humble, barely lived in abode. A tiny and barely furnished apartment with a television well past the point of being obsolete if its wooden casing is anything to go by. The couch, something older than Bruce himself is positioned opposite the TV with a chessboard-sized table in-between, littered with microwavable, eaten food.

"It looks like crap I know," She gestures for him to sit down while she deals with the dirty plates on the table. "If I knew you'd come in-person I'd've-"

"Relax Leslie," Bruce sits on the couch, sinking into it as if it were quicksand. "I've lived in plenty of worse places than this."

"Oh god, don't tell me that," She shakes her head with a grimace. "I don't want to imagine you eating rats in a Mongolian prison."

"The prison was in Peru actually," He wryly informs her. "And I never ate rats. My undefeated streak in the cage fights got me plenty of good food."

She returns with two cups of coffee and a worried, disapproving look on her face, one that makes Bruce instantly feel bad about making her imagine him in such living conditions.

"Sorry," He tells her like a scolded boy and takes a sip of her coffee as she sits to his left. "How's the clinic going?"

She averts her gaze from him, her face forming a frown which instantly makes her look far older than her actual age of 50. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about," she lowers her cup onto the table. "I need your help, I need Batman."

He gives her a curious look, pulling himself back from the sinking depths of the old couch. Leslie was no stranger to living in dangerous places, she traveled the world, working for the Red Cross in some of the least developed and downright hostile countries in the world where almost everything was actively trying to kill you on a daily basis, from diseases to armed militia. Then she opened a clinic in Gotham City, a place where you'd find yourself on the pointy end of a knife just for walking past a particular degenerate at the wrong place and time. A place that actually managed to drive her out once it became impossible to so much as put a bandage on a child without accidentally rubbing one mobster the wrong way.

Yet, she survived all of this and to see her visibly and deeply troubled like this sends a particular chill down Bruce's spine. "Is someone threatening you Leslie?"

She bites her lower lip nervously. "Not me personally, but there's something going on with my less well-off patients. They're..." She sighs. "Disappearing."

"Disappearing?"

She nods. "Not just mine either. A few of my colleagues across the country got together at a convention the other day and they told me the same thing. Patients with low income or patients living on the streets, with drug or alcohol issues, are going missing. There isn't anything about them dying in the obituaries and I've tried to track them down with the information I know but they're not at their homes, most of them don't have family or friends-"

"And the police don't care," Bruce concludes with a bitter taste in his mouth, it's a story he's heard all too many times. "How many patients have gone missing and when did this start?"

"It started two months ago with a female patient Angela Berg," She winces momentarily at the memory of the woman in question. "She's 38 and has severe anger and alcohol issues, it gets her into a lot of fights and accidents. After getting her leg broken in a bar fight, she stumbled next to my clinic and I've been patching her up for three years now. My clinics probably the only place she's got to live in. Most days she just drifts around town, sleep in parks or under bridges when she's not playing her guitar for more booze money."

"Any particular reason she acts this way?"

Leslie nods. "I managed to get her to eat breakfast with me a few times, to try and convince her to get some help but it never stuck. She told me about how her family died in Hurricane Katrina on a visit to New Orleans and... She couldn't cope with it any other way."

_I know the feeling._ Bruce admits, feeling a great deal of sympathy for the woman-in-question. "If she drifts around town, what made you suspicious about her whereabouts?"

"Well," Leslie takes a deep breath, recollecting everything for him. "She has a... routine you could say. Like I said, she plays the guitar for spare change and she usually goes drinking on the weekends. That's when she gets herself into trouble and comes to me afterward. Two weeks passed without incident and I thought she might've gotten tired of living like this and I went to see her. I went to the park where she usually plays and asked some of the waiters in the nearby cafes if they saw her and they told me they hadn't... for two weeks."

"Then you checked where she sleeps," Bruce states more than he asks and gets an affirmative nod from her. "Nothing there either?"

"She didn't have much," Leslie admits, remembering the one time Angela showed her where exactly she lived. "But I could tell no one was there for a long time: the place was picked apart. Angela told me it wasn't odd to find something occasionally stolen but if it wasn't for a broken picture frame of her family lying there in the mud, you'd have never known she lived there. The next places I checked were some of the bars she usually went to and no one saw her there for a while either."

"And you've noticed this with other patients?"

She nods again, drinking some of the cold coffee. "It's been harder to notice it with some of my more... erratic patients, but the patterns the same here and in other towns across Germany. Most of them older with severe psychological or substance abuse issues and all of them homeless, of an older age. Like I said, a few of my colleagues and I started talking at a convention a few days ago and the ones who keep a closer eye on their patients started noticing this too. Over 50 people have just... vanished without a trace and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The cops and press certainly can't or won't."

"They will," Bruce reassures her with a warm smile. "When Batman gets involved with something, people tend to notice. I've got a friend who works at the Gotham Gazette too, with her connections in the media, she'll spread the word as far as she can about these disappearances. Even if the police still ignore it, they won't get away with it once I find these people. Nothing makes a police force think twice about negligence than a good scandal."

"Why would someone go after these people, though? I know human trafficking exists but these people... they're sick, they're old..."

"That's what bothers me too," Bruce looks away from her, staring intently at nothing-in-particular. "The most common targets of human traffickers are young women, healthy ones who get sold off as prostitutes all over the planet. It's not out of the ordinary for ones with mild substance abuse to get manipulated by it into getting sold and then kept where they're sent off too. But the kind of people you're talking about here... They're too old, too tired and too much of a bother for any sane trafficker to use."

"You don't think its human trafficking then?"

"It could be," He says after a moment's hesitation. "But the targets are off... If it was isolated to just this city or just to you I'd say it was a serial killer specifically targeting this particular type of person or out to get you. But if it's across the whole country, that makes it a lot less likely. Serial killers don't work like that, they're loners, and contrary to what most movies and TV would lead you to believe, they're considerably less sophisticated and organized than you might think. Most can't get away with one murder before being caught, let alone 50 people. Something's definitely off about all this..."

"But you'll do it, right? You'll try to find these people, won't you?"

"Of course, I will," He takes her hand in his, giving her the same kind of grin he used on her when she knew him as a little boy. "You know I'm too damn stubborn to let something like this lie."

* * *

**Present Day**

"Nothing out of the ordinary's happened to any of her patients so far," Batman surveys the nearby street with the binoculars built into the white lenses of his cowl. "At least, not during the night. Most of them settle into whatever stopping grounds Leslie could tell me about."

"It's not enough, though."

"No, it's not," Batman admits, locking his eyes on an older, mixed-race man in his 50s with dirt ridden, patched together clothing walking down the street with a half empty bottle of cheap whiskey dangling off his right hand. "Leslie's hardly the only clinic in town and a lot of these people don't ever bother going into one. I didn't want to tell her this but a lot more people are probably gone."

"Potentially hundreds of them," Alfred grimly speculates. "Even after so many years, such apathy continues to distress me."

"We'll find them, Alfred, we always do-" Suddenly, the man halts, standing perfectly still in the middle of the street like a boot camp recruit under scrutiny by his superior officer. Batman looks ahead and around him to spot what exactly he's staring at but finds nothing. The man robotically puts the bottle down and with the same unnatural movements walks towards a sewer grate a few steps away and promptly lifts it off the ground, entering the filth ridden tunnels below.

"Oh dear," Alfred mutters with dread. "The stench..."

"It won't be the first time I've had to go down there." Reaching into one of the many compartments of his belt, he takes out a small breathing mask big enough to cover the exposed portion of his face. Keeping the smells of the sewers at bay and allowing him to speak to Alfred without giving his position away. He leaps into the air and following a short glide, dive bombs into the sewers via the entrance.

"A fact I'm well aware of, hence why I dread the smell of your clothing which, if you recall, I'm responsible for cleaning," He sighs. "I shall remain radio silent until further notice. You'll need to keep your wits about you down there. Good luck, sir."

Allowing himself a tiny grin, he spins around mid-air and fully unleashes his cape to its fullest extent, considerably lessening the speed of his descent and allowing him to safely land. The homeless man didn't make it far, only just turning a corner more moments after Batman's arrival. Allowing his cape to drape over his shoulder, the vigilante follows him cautiously.

Sewers are tricky for a variety of reasons. The assault on one's senses being the first many people think of, not without good reason. The stench is always horrific, even in civilized cities such as these and can get strong enough to knock a man unconscious should he not get prepared for it. The other issues were the waste lining the walls and floor. Substances from God knows where mixing with who knows want resulting in a cocktail of greases to be avoided. Stains capable of making someone slip or get stuck or give away one's location. Rats were another factor to consider, taking the wrong step could crush one and let your target know you're down here.

A multitude of factors Batman considers with each step, his heart beating steadily as he tries to balance between keeping himself hidden and not letting the homeless man escape his sight. A troublesome issue somewhat alleviated by the night vision goggles illuminating the area.

The homeless man turns another corner, his footsteps suddenly stopping and with that, Batman slows down. Putting his back as close to the wall as possible without brushing against it, he cautiously peers over the side of the corner and freezes at the sight before him. The homeless man, standing as stiff as a statue is approached by what can only be described as a Magnezone.

A floating, mechanical being that looks like two wide bowls combined together with two long arms protruding from them and a single, red-eye position front and center. The three clawed hands reach out towards the homeless man, grab him by the shoulders and hoist him off the ground.

Regaining some sense of control after the bewildering turn of events, Batman reaches into one of the compartments near the center of the belt and readies himself to throw a batarang when he hears an odd wobbling noise behind him. Followed by something swooshing through the air.

His reflexes kick in, allowing him to duck just as the metal arm punches right through the concrete wall. He tries to backflip away to get some distance from the other robot only to get hit in the back mid flip. He smashes face first into the dirt ridden waters of the sewer, completely submerged in it as the full effect of the blow leaves him with a constant, infuriating jolt of pain in his back.

"Master Bruce!" Alfred's worried voice rings in his ear. "Are you alright?"

"Wonderful," Batman grunts with a hint of amusement in his voice. "Sorry about messing the suit up, I'll be sure to make it regret that."

Taking five batarangs and his grappling gun out, he bursts out of the water and immediately tosses the five projectiles in the way of the robot, hoping for at least three of them to reach it. To his dismay, a pair of turrets appear from the upper case of the robot and promptly shoot down all of his batarangs.

Knowing they're likely to fire on him in a matter of seconds, he fires his grappling gun towards the robot to pierce its shell through the bright red-eye and deliver an electric shock to temporarily, but permanently if he's lucky, take the thing out. The robot casually grabs hold of his grapple line, its outer shell completely unaffected by the electricity coursing through it. Then, its red eye starts to glow brighter.

"Shit," He mutters and only narrowly avoids the wide laser from burning half his face off. Instead, it singes the side of his neck, instinctively making him want to rip his whole cowl off and throw it at far away as possible.

Noticing the turrets take aim, he grabs hold of his cape and shouts. "Release!"

The black fabric immediately detaches from the rest of the cowl, allowing him to fling it at the drone, momentarily blinding it. Its lasers manage to cut several holes through the cap, but they fail to stop it from covering it's body up.

While the robot tries to tear the cape off, Batman activates the secondary function inside his grappling gun: the explosive gel rounds and promptly fires four, fist-sized chunks of the substance onto the wall just above the robot and pressed down on the detonator button.

Instantly, the struggling robot is buried under piles upon piles of rubble smashing down on it. Hearing his heart pound in his ears, he pulls out more batarangs of the explosive variety and aims his grappling gun at the rubble, cautiously approaching it. The rock tilts in every direction as the robot tries to break free, but the cracks in its shell, along with the water seeping in have taken effect. It's bright red-eye starts to glow a lot less bright.

Then, in a last act of defiance, one of its two turrets manages to peek out through the rubble and fires on him. He tries to dodge but this time, the laser connects, piercing through the armor of his suit and blasting through his left shoulder. Biting back a curse, he throws batarangs with more force than necessary and drives two clean through the turret, causing it to explode. Finally, the robot seemingly dies, all power sapped from it if its faded eye is any indication.

With the threat defeated, at least for the moment, he allows himself to relax and let the surge of adrenaline pass. Something he quickly forgets once the pain from his back, neck, and his shoulder come back, stronger than ever before. Sitting down on the edge of the walkway, glances towards his burned shoulder and is silently thankful for his mask more than ever before. The stench of the sewers and of burning flesh isn't one he wants to get a whiff of.

"Alfred?"He asks, sounding more tired than he thought he was.

"I'm here Master Bruce, have you managed to subdue the... machine?"

"Its dead," He looks back at the defeated robot in the pile he'll have to dig him out of soon. "There's more of them Alfred, and if I'm going to take them down, I'm gonna need some serious help."


	3. Now In Technicolor Part 2

"Are you sure about this, Master Bruce?"

The old Englishman's question echoes through the subterranean base of Wayne Industries Berlin division, one of a dozen bunkers built by his surrogate son in the weeks leading to expanded, global war on criminals. The surrogate son in question stands on the opposite end of the room, the upper portion of his Batman suit discarded after suffering damage and his body locked in a firing position.

He holds a black rifle in his hands, though not a firearm. Rather, it is a new device, courtesy of Lucius Fox, the vice president of Wayne Industries, capable of releasing an aimed EMP blast to knock out any electronics within its range and radius. Naturally, the young masters safe method of testing such a thing is for his butler to send the large tank-like car crashing towards Bruce at its top speed.

"I'll be fine Alfred," Bruce shouts back with an ease in his voice. "If I can dodge bullets, I think I can dodge a tank."

"Not at a speed of 300 miles per hour you bloody won't." He whispers though not quietly enough for Bruce not to hear him.

"Word of advice Alfred," He chuckles. "Keep it to yourself if you don't want me to hear it."

"You're not as good as you think you are, Master Bruce," Alfred reluctantly pulls out his phone and taps into the Batmobile's control system app. "Otherwise that robot wouldn't have snuck up on you."

He notices a momentary hesitation from Bruce, someone who usually snaps back immediately. "There'll be plenty of time for banter on the plane ride Alfred," Bruce cracks the bones of his neck, wincing momentarily from the two-day-old burn mark. "Now fire up the car, I need to make sure this thing works right."

Following a long sigh, he complies with Bruce's wishes and commands the Batmobile to rush forward the man responsible for building and designing it. With a sound eerily similar to lightning, the car springs into action, releasing a burst of fire from its rear exhaust port and does as commanded.

The distance between the vehicle and its target closes in an instant, with Bruce standing perfectly still. Seemingly oblivious to the massive hunk of steel rushing towards him. Then, the command app for the car starts to beep with a single message: power failure.

Soon, the sound of rubber tires shrieking against the concrete fills the whole chamber as the car quickly loses all power and merely skids along with the momentum it built up before. With a loud thud, it finally halts mere inches from its designer, no longer a tank capable of outracing sports car or taking on a small army, but an expensive hunk of metal and wires.

"Told you it'd work," Bruce states, not bothering to hide a smug sense of satisfaction from his voice as he casually walks back to his butler. The device responsible for taking out the Batmobile slung casually over his shoulder. "And I wasn't going to just let it hit me if it didn't work."

He hands Alfred a miniature version of the grappling gun, one meant primarily to fire a line straight upward to allow Batman a quick and easy way out of a bad situation or to escape back into the shadows with some theatricality. His means of evading the Batmobile in case the EMP rifle failed.

Alfred merely glares at the device with the same look he once used for the droppings of Thomas Wayne's old dog, specifically when he had to pick them up and clean up after it.

As if reading his mind, Bruce flatly comments from the computer. "I'm crazy Alfred, I'm not stupid."

"Then why-"

"Didn't I tell you?" He interjects with a sly smile. "How's that fun?"

Mindful of Bruce's earlier advice, Alfred bites back a few less than savory words and places the grappling hook onto the table, joining Bruce at the computer. "Lucius sent you his findings on the robot?"

"That he did," Bruce confirms with a few clicks, opening a detailed overview of the machine in question. "The design of it's actually old if you can believe it. I cross referenced the data from the salvaged remains and I found stark similarities between it and old World War 2 era sketches, specifically from Nazi Germany."

"Not surprising really," Alfred states with a hint of reminiscing in his voice. "My father was an intelligence officer in the British military during the war, they sent him all across Europe to Nazi testing sites to either gather information or dispose of them. As was the practice for many soldiers at the time, he snagged a few... Things of interest he should've held off on but no one gave him any grief for it."

"Did he ever fight off any Hell Knights?"

"I wondered that myself when he first showed those sketches to me," Alfred grins at the memory. "But no, he never fought the legions of the underworld. Or any of that other Nazi bollocks. Turns out it takes more than fanaticism and money to do the impossible."

"Or something as far ahead of your technological capabilities as this robot," Bruce leans back in his chair, contemplatively staring at the data before him. "But it clearly isn't impossible now. And that worries me about the other things."

"You mean the state of the kidnapped downtrodden?"

Bruce nods thoughtfully. "This machine isn't **like** the sketches you'd find online, it **is** the actual designs brought to life. With some alterations, of course, but fundamentally the same. Then there's the source of the signal possibly controlling these things."

With a few more keyboard presses, another tab opens, this one with information pertaining to the supposed source of the control signal for the machines fought in the sewers.

"Castle Hassenstadt," Bruces states with a slight growl in his voice, as is the case whenever he gets fully professional outside the suit. "Built in the 10th century by a German aristocrat from the Domashev lineage, he spent said lineage's fortune on constructing the most impregnable castle to ever exist. It took 25 years and left him emotionally, physically and financially ruined, all of which contributed to his family name's decline as he was the sole heir to it and fathered no more children to inherit it."

He rises from the chair, spinning his wounded shoulder while making his way towards a suit stand emerging from the ground. "The castle was handed down from one family to another with little of significance happening there, until 1941 when rumors started to surround the place. About Nazi human experimentation being conducted all the way until 1945 when Soviet troops breached into German territory and took it over. They murdered everyone in the village below and thoroughly investigated the castle."

"And they found nothing."

Bruce puts the chest piece of the Batsuit on. "They found a small garrison stationed there, but no atom bombs or soldiers from Hell or anything even remotely like a laboratory. The castle, along with the town, remains abandoned to this very day. The site has very little strategic relevance and foreboding urban legends surround the village, as is the case where Soviet troops were especially vicious."

"The perfect place for a human trafficker to build a base of operations."

Just as he did earlier, Bruce hesitates for a moment too long for Alfred's licking while slipping on a pair of purple gloves. "Maybe."

Alfred gives him a puzzled look. "Maybe?"

He takes a few more moments to speak again until his suit is fully assembled and his Batman persona complete with it. "The people targeted, alcoholics, junkie, old men, and women well past their prime and suffering from all sorts of diseases, these aren't the prime targets of human traffickers." He turns to Alfred, his feelings all but unreadable thanks to his modified voice and concealed eyes. "Something... More sinister is happening, something very wrong."

Alfred takes a good hard look at him, the slight twitches of his lips, the tiny quiver in his voice, and like clockwork, his mind pieces together the information of the whole affair thus far and realizes what he's implying. "You think someone is conducting human experimentation on these people."

"It's a tried and true tradition of the Nazi regime," He continues his lecturing. "They used mentally and physically unstable individuals for experiments, their primary purpose was to... " His jaw clenches. "Cleanse... the gene pool, but also gave them an opportunity to test drugs, weapons, devices, all sorts of things on the unwanted of society."

"The Nazi connections are certainly strong," Alfred agrees, glancing back the photo of Castle Hassenstadt still present on the computer. "The bloody place was rumored as a test site, these machines most definitely bear more than a few marks of Nazi design and it would fit with what they do their... undesirables."

Bruce takes the EMP rifle off the table, examining it closely to ensure no dents are present. "But that's not what worries you, is it?"

He holsters the rifle over his shoulder and looks over his shoulder across Alfred. "The world's... changing Alfred. All sorts of things are happening out there right out of comic books, a bullet-proof man in Metropolis, Atlantis actually existing, aliens from other worlds... Now there's Nazi robots abducting people and taking them to abandoned castles... A castle I'm about to break into and fight more robots..."

In spite of his voice modulator, the fear still reaches Alfred's ear. "I didn't train for this Alfred. Men can get scared, men bleed, men can get beaten if you so much as smack them right. Machines don't. You can't intimidate them, you can barely sneak up on them and it sure as hell takes a lot more than a smack to bring one down. And they're as fast as gunslingers, capable of gunning you down in one tenth of a heartbeat."

"And now you're out of your elements, you're afraid."

He fully turns around to look at him, and even buried behind so many years of hardship and layers of armor, Alfred immediately recognizes the look of a small boy afraid to cross the street on his first day of school. Just as he did on that day 20 years ago, he puts a comforting hand on Bruce's shoulder and a smile to aid it.

"I understand," He warmly tells him. "Really, I do. Just listening to this whole bloody story will probably keep me up at night for a while to come."

His lips quirk up into a tiny grin. "But don't sell yourself short, Master Bruce. Machines may be harder to fight than men, the world might have Super-Men leaping over buildings, but do not underestimate yourself or your accomplishments. You broke the curse of Gotham, sir. When everyone else gave up, you stood your ground and restored people's will to fight. You stared at the most God forsaken city to ever grace the United States, and you defeated everything it had to throw at you. If you can beat Gotham, you can damn well best anything. Certainly some bloody machines."

Feeling his young master shoulder soften, he receives a genuine smile for his efforts followed by a hug, the first he's received since the two of them found one another in the jungle prisons of Peru.

"Thank you, Alfred." He tells him with all the warmth he can muster given his deepened, demonic sounding voice and pulls back. "I couldn't have found a better friend to help me if I spent a lifetime looking."

"Yes well," Alfred pats him on the back. "Just remember your friend has the grueling task of cleansing sewer drenched clothing, so, do me a favor and avoid those places."

"I'll be sure to ask the murderbots nicely about that," He quips while tapping a single button on his belt, opening an adjacent wall inside the chamber, revealing one of the many Batwing jet planes built to get him quickly from one place to another. With renewed vigor, he heads towards the black aircraft, ready to take on what may be the most challenging battle he's had to fight yet.

* * *

**Ccccaaannnnn you spot the references?**


	4. Now In Technicolor Part 3

 

* * *

_I'm not doing this for fun, Alfred._

Those were the exact words he told his father figure and present partner in vigilantism. The first among many more which saved him from getting dragged back to Gotham and put in a straight jacket when the two confronted one at the end of Bruce's 2-month long stay in a Peruvian prison almost 7 years ago. It's true even today, mostly.

His work always brings his into the thick of the worst humanity has to offer: murder, extortion, human trafficking, prostitution,... Things most people actively avoid, and all sane ones actively despise. But there are moments, quiet ones where his vast repertoire of skills and equipment give him a certain sense of freedom. Whether it's practicing certain techniques in one of his many dojos, driving his vehicles on patrol or in this case, falling hundreds of feet above the air where he can't help but find a certain child-like glee in his... profession.

Making Alfred break into a cold sweat while testing a gadget also works just fine.

His current target, a massive and fairly old castle of German origin, grows larger and larger as he nears it. The wind whizzes in his ears, even through the cowl and smashes against his whole body the faster his descent gets. Upon reaching a decent viewing distance from the structure, he takes out his grappling gun and fires it upward. The tip of the line bursts open, releasing a large, black balloon into the air, one he connects to his person by magnetizing the grappling gun to his belt.

The balloon in question originated as part of Wayne Industries Fulton recovery method, allowing soldiers to simply release a balloon into the air which would get caught by a passing airplane and hoist them off into safety. Before Bruce Wayne closed down the arms tech division of the company, for the public, at least. This larger variant allows him to remain suspended in the air without the noise of the jet or the short-lived airborne qualities of his cape.

With his descent slowed considerably, then outright stopped, he checks the line on the gun to ensure it won't suddenly snap then looks back down at the castle and zooms in on it via the lenses of his cowl. Much to his chagrin, he finds the outer perimeter and defenses littered with the same sewer dwelling robots hovering about. Each one patrolling a chosen side of a wall with their turrets covering potential blind spots for one another. He finds no sign of people, either personnel or victims anywhere on the exterior.

"It seems sneaking in may prove impossible sir," Alfred chimes in from the bunker, seeing everything Batman does via footage sent from the cowl lenses.

"If we're resorting to a more bombastic approach," He reaches into a compartment near the center of the belt and from it releases five, fist-sized, bat-shaped drones into the air. "Then let's make sure no one gets hurt."

"Understood sir, initiating drone infiltration protocol."

The bat drones do as per the instructions of both Alfred and Batman, hovering quickly but cautiously towards the castle. Three hovers just outside the line of sight of the patrolling robots, hiding behind or under the walls as they pass by while two go inside. To no one's surprise, they find more hostile robots patrolling the inside, unaware of the intruders skulking in the shadows.

To Batman's relief, there's not a living, breathing soul in sight outside or in the castle. The sole occupants during the initial sweep appear to be solely the patrolling robots hovering around the places.

One of the two drones, however, stumbles onto a security robot emerging from a wall, causing the bricks to blur like water after a stone throw as it passes through before it returns to normal. Alfred tries to command the bat drone to get closer but the weakening connection between the device and the two recipients of it with Alfred, in particular, receiving a great deal of static on his end.

"This is a clear a picture as we're going to get without going in, sir," Alfred pulls the drone back into the shadows to await further instruction. "At least we can confirm none of the prisoners are on the surface of the castle."

"If they were, I have no idea how we could pull this off without getting someone killed," The bad feeling he's had since the start of this case starts to creep back into his gut. "At least we know whoever took them is still here, otherwise, they would've left days ago."

"Shall I prepare for the assault, then?"

"I'd prefer not to let them know we're here but," He sighs with a grimace. "Even with the EMP rifle, I can't take them all on, a distraction will have to do."

"Very well sir, I'll try not to enjoy my carnage too much."

"And he tells me not to kick a kick out of this," Batman mutters, smirking in anticipation for the predictable response.

"As a mad man once told me," Alfred formally replies. "Keep it to yourself if you don't want me to bloody hear it."

Suddenly, the bad feeling doesn't quite make his gut wrench anymore. Overhead he hears the engines of his jet crack the sky like thunder, followed by a massive, black shadow descending onto the castle before firing three javelin missiles at it. Two in the center of the east and west wall, while the third smashes into the center of the courtyard. All three take out quite a few of the patrolling robots, the rest open fire on the retreating jet.

With the enemy distracted, he detaches from the balloon and following another short dive from the air, he releases a small electrical current from his gloved fingertip rippling into the black cape. In an instant, the memory cloth fabric draping over his shoulders extends out into a wing-shaped glider.

Using the built up momentum, he pushes the cape and by extension his entire body upwards, allowing him to easily glide through one of the windows on the eastern end of the castle without the risk of a patrolling robot gunning him down. They're all far too pre-occupied with the black jet fighter bombing them outside.

Still, this distraction created an unwanted but unavoidable side effect: it's tipped off the current residents that their home isn't safe anymore, and they're no doubt preparing to escape as quickly as possible. Leaving him with a shrinking window to catch them. The data retrieved from the sewer bot only give him directions to this place, a security flaw in the software that might have been corrected or removed in the two days since that scuffle. If he doesn't succeed now, he might lose all those people forever.

This urgency is what, in spite of the logical part of his brain telling him not to, leads him to rush through the ancient, stone hallways of the castle to the hologram covered door. Luckily, thanks to the spy drones and Alfred's distraction, he reaches the door in under a minute, with a few more seconds spent hiding behind a stone pillar as more robots float out of it to respond to the Batwings assault.

"Alfred," He whispers to his butler. "Fire a javelin 300 meters from my current position and wait 5 seconds before detonating it. I can't see what the door looks like but it's definitely reinforced."

"Understood sir," Confirms Alfred, prompting Batman to return back into one the hallway he just entered through when he hears the sky crack once again. Then the ceiling of the main hall blasts apart with massive stone chunks smashing down onto the floor as the javelin breaks through and digs into the ground right next to the camouflaged door. Then, it explodes.

The nearest pillars break apart with the very ground shaking in the wake of the fiery inferno unleashed. But more importantly: the hologram is broken, and two large, metallic doors now lay on the floor, broken and charred. On the other side of the rapidly clearing smoke, Batman finds a metal tunnel, a high-tech one in stark contrast to the ancient nature of the castle hiding it.

"Sending the drones in first may prove more beneficial," Says Alfred. "Unlike the rest of the castle, we have no schematics or photographs to get a rough idea of the place."

"Ordinarily, I'd agree, Alfred," Bruce takes the EMP rifle off his shoulder and activates it, pointing its barrel at the recently opened hatch. "But we're running out of time and I can't afford to let them get away, not without at least getting a tracker on whoever's behind this."

"In that case," Alfred sighs, his disapproval apparent in his tone even if he doesn't truly voice it. "Should we lose connection with one another, I wish you the best of luck Master Bruce."

"Happy thoughts Alfred, happy thoughts..." He takes a few steps down the stairway and immediately notices a distinct lack of any shadows to hide with. The tunnel is a far cry from the darkly lit castle above. Aiming down the length of the tunnel, he pulls the trigger on Lucius' latest contribution to his crime on terror and thanks to it, the entire tunnel losses all power. Leaving it completely shrouded in darkness.

Silently praying he doesn't run into any more patrolling bots until the rifle is ready for firing again, he presses onward, once again choosing to abandon some core tenets of stealth in favor of getting to his targets quickly. Corners go unchecked, unnecessary noise is made and a few avoidable close encounters with drone bots nearly blow what little, temporary cover he has.

Just when he starts to worry this whole tunnel might go on forever, he turns a corner and finds a large set of doors of comparable size and appearance to the one protected by the hologram up above. Firing his rifle again to darken the hallway, Batman slows down to something approaching his usual pace of approach. The doors slide open, revealing a long stretch of catwalks on the other side.

Pressing his back against the wall, he tries contacting Alfred to no avail. As they both suspected, regular communication channels either don't work, meaning he'll have to improvise if things get dicey. For a split second, he wishes he had a more hands-on partner with him, and not for the first time. But, like any time the idea comes up, he promptly squashes it, instead choosing to focus on the goings on of the room.

Peeking over the corner, he sees a massive warehouse-sized laboratory with bright lights and snow white plates covering every inch of the place from the floor to the ceiling. Computer panels are lined all across the walls, most having a human-sized cylinder situated next to them with some yellowish liquid substance still floating inside all of them.

Quickly descending from the catwalk and landing behind one of the many cylinders, Batman surveys his surroundings and finds not a single soul or machine there. No prisoners, no robots protecting the laboratory and certainly no one behind this bizarre situation. That is, until a lone computer terminal, the central one situated at the heart of the laboratory suddenly comes to life with a staticky screen.

"Sneaking is a fruitless waste of energy, Batman," A robotic yet distinctly German-sounding voice echoes through the terminal. "I know you're hiding behind a cylinder in the south-western corner of the room. Come out so we may speak properly."

Batman's grip on the EMP rifle tightens as he suddenly feels like a rat in a cage waiting to bury him under miles of rubble, something not even his training can save him from. A demise that may come sooner should he remain uncooperative. With a great deal of reluctance, Batman steps out of the shadows, keeping the EMP rifle primed and ready to fire. His eyes dart all over the room, trying to locate any possible spots from which a group of attack bots can come from.

"Do not be afraid," The voice says again as the staticky image of its owner begins to clear up. "None of my assistant bots are here save for the ones you remarkable vehicle is annihilating above."

"Who are you?" Batman asks, positioning himself 5 feet away from the computer. "What is... all of this?"

"The place where a new frontier of the human mind has been discovered," The voice says with glee as the static finally clears up, revealing a being distinctly not human. But a machine, and one with a human-shaped skull face which sends a cold chill down Batman's spine. "As for my name? An irrelevant detail, one lost to time and shan't return ever again. You may simply call me... the Brain."

Batman gives him a dubious look. "The Brain?"

"Of course," The machine confirms. "A title should reflect the being, no? I am a simple brain in a mechanical jar, while you are a man dressed as a flying rodent."

"A brain in a-" Batman shakes his head in disbelief, his patience for the oddities of this case running out. "I don't care about your personal delusions, where are the people you've abducted? What are you doing with them?"

"The subjects are safe in my care, far from harm."

"Not from you, they're not," Batman scoffs with the metal man merely chuckling at the insult.

"You have clearly gotten the wrong impression of my work, Batman," The Brain says with a tone of friendliness to his voice which would fool anyone not routinely dealing with self-deluding liars. "I'm merely giving the castaways of the Aryan race a divine purpose. One which will bring us closer to the realm of gods."

In a rare instance of dropping his stern facade when dealing with criminals, Batman snorts at the statement with a humorless smile on his face. "A Nazi with a God complex. I wish I could say I'm surprised but your drone spoke volumes about you already."

"We all have our trademark quirks," The Brain responds again with the same friendliness, undeterred by Batman's clear disdain for him. "In truth, I'm glad you've come here, Batman. It was never my intention for this facility to be discovered but as a scientist, I know full well that unforeseen changes may provide the greatest of results!"

An explosion nearby gets Batman's attention and to his dismay, he finds a large ball of fire emerge from the hallway he used to enter the base with the noise of crumbling rock following suit. The tunnel has collapsed and with it the only way for him to escape. Just when the trapped vigilante turns to confront the Brain, one of the cylinders slides open, allowing the yellow liquid to seep out all over the floor.

Every survival instinct the Dark Knight has go off like an alarm in his head as he aims the EMP rifle at whatever's inside the cylinder. His whole body tenses up, his heart rate slowly but surely beating faster and faster as a metal yet human shaped arm and leg are the first to emerge. Soon, the metal man comes into full view. It stands at nearly three feet tall, its knight like exterior towering over the Batman who takes a few slow steps back.

Yet it is not the size or antique look of the metal man that throws Batman off, but its rainbow arrangement of colors consisting of green, red, pink, orange, yellow, purple and finally blue with two white, glowing eyes staring at him.

"Now then," The Brain speaks up, addressing the metal man. "Let us see the true mental fortitude of the man who tamed the bleak city of Gotham. X0-1! Code red!"

The metal man nods at his master before looking back at Batman, in an instant, the various colors of his body fade away, overtaken completely by a thick, blood red one. An inhuman, bone chilling scream echoes from inside the helmet as a metal man clenches his fist and rushes forward with superhuman speed.

What little distance there was between them is quickly closed by the X0-1 who easily snatches the EMP rifle right out of Batman's hands and is promptly crushed with absolute ease by the metal man. A quick jab to the chest knocks the wind out of him, leaving Batman vulnerable to a neck grab. X0-1 hoists him off the ground, his grip feeling like an anaconda circling around the vigilante's neck.

The metal man glows brighter still, with something resembling a release vent opening in his chest with a mass of red, swirling energy gathering inside of it. Then, the energy bursts out, engulfing the Batman and making the whole world go red.

* * *

**Stay tuned for more chapters in this series! While you're at it, check out some of the other DC Redux titles in this bold, new universe such as , Green Lantern: The Book of Oa, The Flash: Incandescent Legacy, Green Arrow: KIA or Wonder Woman: Man, Woman, Bullet, and 21st Century Super-Man!**


	5. Now In Technicolor Part 4

Sad orphan boys and anger aren't foreign concepts to one another. Bruce Wayne, and by extension Batman, know this better than most.

In the first months following his parent's death, that anger controlled him completely. Leading to frequent and violent fist fights with other children in school. Random, usually uncalled for acts of needless violence on Bruce's part. It was a perpetual world of red, where everything and everyone seemed hostile to him.

Once this became a common enough occurrence, Alfred signed him up for Karate lessons as a means of venting his frustrations in a more controlled, proper environment for it. Then came Taekwondo, then Judo, then cage fighting before he went abroad following his failed attempt to stop a mugging.

The failure which set him back until years of higher practice and learning, with an added bonus of Alfred tempering him and broadening his horizons to the woes beyond Gotham, finally allowed him to transform the anger into a well-forged blade. One with two sides, one called Bruce Wayne to stamp out crime with Wayne Industries vast resources by through philanthropy, the other called Batman with which to take on a more hands-on approach to suppressing crime.

Now all of that has crumbled away, now he's back in a world of red and what's left of his sanity is trying desperately to take that control back.

Like a wild animal, he foams at the mouth with insane, gurgled growls and yells escaping his lips. He fists pound ruthlessly into the ground, wearing down the fabric of his gloves and revealing the armored plating beneath. That is when he isn't pounding his own face against the metal floor, making an already ruthless headache that much worse. The clanking of metal against metal gets his attention, his head snapping towards the source of the noise like a dog. X0-1 strolls casually towards him. It's staggering height of 3 feet looking all the more imposing to the kneeling Batman.

As he stares at the metal man, visions of the Crime Alley night flash before his eyes. The armored giant replaced by the hooded, masked man who's haunted his worst nightmares for 18 years now. The nameless, faceless murderer of the Waynes. now killing them again, and again. and again right in front of him. And once again, he does nothing.

_Don't do it! Don't attack him! STOP!_

The advice from what little sanity he has left go ignored as Batman pounces at the metal giant like a cheetah towards its prey and is swiftly smacked away through the air, smashing through a computer terminal on his way down. He lies on the pile of broken metal, barely registering the pain from his wild mind and the perpetual rush of adrenaline coursing through his entire body.

He flays around in the mess, growling and kicking and clawing in every direction to try and escape. X0-1 arrives soon enough, grabbing the vigilante by his leg and casually flinging him to the opposite end of the room. His second trip across the air only stops when his back hits a wall and he finds himself falling face first onto the upper floor overlooking the laboratory.

This time, the pain registers more, allowing the sane part of Batman's mind a slight but quickly slipping thread of control. Slowly but surely, he succeeds in forcing his right hand to do what he wants it to, his fingers tightening on the grip of the grapnel gun attached to the side of his belt. His thumb switching to a special firing mode reserved for another type of threat: animals.

Knowing there's a good chance he'll lose control or get killed by the metal man, he uses all the willpower and control he can muster to quickly point the barrel of the gun until it presses against the armor surrounding his neck. With a final pull of the trigger, a small dart bursts forth and pierces right through his cowl and into his skin. Releasing a powerful tranquilizer serum capable of knocking out a wild dog.

The effect is nearly instantaneous as the adrenaline and anger subside considerably, leaving him panting on the ground as if all the strength he had mere minutes ago has abandoned him. His respite is short-lived, however, when the clanking of metal against metal on the lower level grows louder and more frequent.

With a growl, he jumps back to his feet and spots X0-1 running towards him, another beam of red energy ready to discharge from its chest. Dropping a few smoke pellets to cover his escape, Batman grapnels away to a shadowed corner just in time to dodge the metal man's blast.

X0-1 jumps and lands on the catwalk, swinging its arms with enough speed to dispel the gathered smoke. The instant it does, however, the remote mine meant to disable escaping cars on foot left by Batman detonates under its feet, causing it to fall down to the lower level with massive chunks of concrete falling on top of it.

"Impressive Batman, most impressive," The Brain comments from the only operational computer terminal. "It seems my decision to use you as a test subject was wise indeed. To have enough will power to overcome such anger is truly remarkable."

 _That's right, keep running your mouth,_ Batman reaches into his belt, pulling out several explosive type batarang and one special one to help him get out of this mess. _Just need your toy over there to come out..._

As he anticipated, X0-1 bursts forth from the rubble, jumping into the air and landing near the center of the laboratory. The color of his armor shifts again, this time taking on an orange hue. The metal man falls to his knees, his cybernetic fingers driving into the floor and scratching at it wildly.

"The lottery ticket is mine!" An inhuman voice yells from inside the suit. "It's mine! MINE! YOU CAN'T HAVE IT! CAN'T. HAVE. IT!"

"You scum sucking freak!" Batman yells at the Brain, never taking his eyes of X0-1. "What're you doing to these people?!"

"As I already told you, Batman," The Brain replies with the same casual tone. "Giving the refuse of German society a new, glorious purpose. Observe!"

Like a dog snapping at his owner's command, X0-1 turns his attention back to Batman and once more gathers energy at the discharge point on his chest. Instead of firing it, however, he instead opts to charge, no doubt an attempt to destroy his targets cover. In response, Batman grapples at a 75-degree angle upward just as the machine man breaks smashes through the terminal with absolute ease.

X0-1 spins around and fires the beam of energy at the swinging Dark Knight, only narrowly missing him thanks to the vigilante landing back down in the last possible second. Batman rolls out of the way of another, smaller blast and flings all of his batarangs at X0-1, running back for more cover without missing a beat.

The explosive batarangs connect but do very little visible damage to the machine man. Neither it nor its master take notice of a single batarang slipping through the smoke of its destroyed brethren going for another target: the Brain's sole active computer. The metal projectile sticks to the side of the terminal, activating a special protocol to piggyback off the Brain's signal to not only pinpoint his possible location but give Alfred and the Batwing an idea of where he is.

Popping out of cover, Batman fires off explosive gel rounds at X0-1, managing to land a handful of hits on him and detonating them but once again, to no avail. In response, the machine man rips off a nearby terminal and like a deadly frisbee,hurls it at Batman. It narrowly misses, managing to cut the tip off Batman's left cowl ear and pin the monitor right into the wall behind him.

 _This would be so much easier if he the EMP rifle wasn't destroyed,_ He mentally curses his luck before realizing the possible extent of the suits integration with the person inside. A close enough integration of flesh and metal, coupled with an EMP charge could potentially kill the man as well as the machine. _On second thought..._

He expects another rush attack to get him out of cover, instead, Batman uses the pinned monitor as a sort of mirror and notices the blurry reflection of X0-1 aiming its hand toward him. A second later, a barrage of laser fire explodes from the palm of the machine man's hand, shredding through Batman's cover.

Cursing under his breath, Batman has no choice but to run for it towards the nearest terminal for more cover, the laser trailing closely behind him along with another beam of orange energy from X0-1s chest. As he avoids the barrage, Batman notices something about the attack strategy so far, always it involves getting him out of cover, out in the open and preferably close to ensure the chest beam connects with him. Never has X0-1 tried to fire it through cover as he just did with the palm lasers.

Just as he's about to reach another terminal to catch his breath, even for an instant, X0-1 fires a single rocket from his wrist. The missile whizzes right in front of Batman and blows up a wall to his left. The sudden explosion knocks Batman right off his feet, causing him to roll violently against the ground before finally stopping right out in the open of the laboratory and merely a few feet away from X0-1.

The barrage of palm lasers stops, with X0-1 once again readying energy in its chest piece for firing. Knowing that he might not be able to calm himself down again should the machine man truly press his advantage, Batman decides to test his theory in a last ditch effort.

Forcing himself through the pain, dizziness, and tranquilizer serum, he unhooks his belt from his cowl and with as much force as he can muster and tosses it at the machine man. When the chest beam fires again, all Batman can do is watch and hope his plan works, for he neither has the time or strength to roll out of its way, not at this distance.

He can't help but smile when the beam is blocked by his cape and with it, has an opening to release a few more smoke pellets to cover his escape once more into cover. Even with this turn of events, however, Batman knows he's severely pushing his luck. He's tired, hurt, quickly running out of ways to distract or evade his enemy. He has to either escape or win this fight in the next few minutes, or things won't end well for him.

"You continue to excel, Batman," The Brain praises. "Not only have you fought against the emotional enhancers but you've successfully managed to discover an unfortunate flaw of the design. Truly, I shall have to make quite a few necessary alterations for future models. Rest assured that your contributions to the upcoming Reich will be documented well."

 _The praise of a Nazi means so much to me..._ Batman very nearly says out loud but doesn't to avoid revealing his location. Suddenly, he notices the slight rumbling going off above him. An intuitive sense of his surroundings honed by his training in Africa, allowing him to notice things before his eyes or ears can spot them from the environment. Suddenly, he likes his odds considerably more. Until he hears another noise, one much closer and with far worse implications.

X0-1 rips a cylinder right out of the ground and tosses it overhead, smashing two computer terminals and cylinders in the process and once again leaving Batman exposed. The vigilante tries to hold the machine man back with more explosive gel rounds but its useless, X0-1 smacks it out of his hand and grabs him once more by the neck, hoisting him off the ground.

"Perhaps another change of colors will do?" The Brain muses out loud. "Oh yes! Why didn't I think of it before? X0-1! Activate the fear mode!"

The machine mans colors change again, this time to a bright yellow. Inside the helmet, Batman hears not the roars of anger or the ramblings of a greedy lunatic, but whimpers and pleading.

"P-p-pl-please! Do-don't come any closer! N-no! No-no mom! Not the belt! N-not the belt!"

Despite every one of his survival instincts screaming at him to think of a way out of this, Batman can't help but feel a great deal of sympathy for the man inside. Being forced to relive whatever horrendous thing from his past that still haunts him. Especially since it's his abusive mother, the last person he should be afraid of.

"Now," The Brain states in gleeful anticipation, earning a look of pure hatred from the struggling Batman. "Let us see what the Batman fears!"

The yellow energy discharges, engulfing most of Batman's body. At first, the burning sensation he felt the first time he was struck comes back, with vivid, life-like images of large, imposing bats coming at him. An endless swarm of large black wings, imposing fangs and blood-red, murderous eyes.

In the heart of this swarm, he finds his parents. Thomas and Martha Wayne looking at him with pure disdain all over their faces.

"You're a disgrace!" His father's roars, pointing an accusing finger at his son.

"You've squandered everything we've built!" Her mother accuses. "And for what? This... childish thrill?!"

And so, for what seems like an eternity, the bats snap at him and his parents continue on listing the myriad of reasons he's a failure, a disappointment, a man destined to die sad, pathetic and alone.

Yet through all of this, a sense of calm helps him keep his wits. He sees the monstrous bats narrowly attack him over and over but it doesn't move him, he hears his loved one chastise him with ruthless anger but it doesn't touch him. For in this vortex of fear, his mind reminds him of the good he's managed to accomplish.

He's saved lives all across the world, he's kept his promise to his parents and restored Gotham City to a new golden age. Children can play in parks there again, adults can stay out well past midnight without the fear of rapists and murderous keeping them prisoners inside their own homes. A new police commissioner leads the charge with a fair, good man as mayor.

A few years ago, such an assault on his psyche would've left him destroyed. Now? Batman can't help but smirk.

"You're wrong," He whispers willfully, his barely audible voice acting like a sonic repellent to the bat swarm, causing them all to scurry off into the dark corners of his mind. "I'm not a failure. I've kept my promise, I've done good with my life and I'll keep doing good until I'm too old to try or dead."

Suddenly, his parent's voices are gone even though their lips continue to flap, no doubt still directing insults at him.

"I'm the man criminals fear when the sun sets," He says with more strength to his voice. "I'm the man innocent people across the world look to, to keep them safe!"

His parents start to fade, like water calming down after being disturbed a stone throw. Suddenly he's back in the real world, still being assaulted by the yellow beam and held by X0-1. Batman responds in kind, grabbing the metal man by the neck and holding on tightly to it.

"I. AM. BATMAN!"

And with that mighty roar, he rams a batarang right into the chest piece, causing X0-1 to release him and step back as the energy suddenly bursts forth in many different directions. The Brain looks on in a mix of shock and intrigue as his soldier falls to his knees, screaming inside of the helmet before finally collapsing onto the ground, defeated and whimpering.

Batman stands over him, panting but victorious. He walks over to X0-1 and picks him off the ground, thankful that he can hear the man inside breath still.

"Truly, I could not have wanted a more glorious conclusion to this!" The Brain exclaims, giddy with excitement at this turn of events. "For a simple man, your mental fortitude is the strength of the gods! Truly, if more men like you existed, my plans would be in quite a lot of trouble."

"It already is," Batman states matter of factly. "You lost the second you didn't blow this whole place up with me in it. Now, you're going to lose everything."

The Brain chuckles. "You act as though I'm not able to do that now? Perhaps I was wrong, clearly, you're not thinking straight."

"Keep telling yourself that," With a press of a button on his belt, Batman activates the full capabilities of the batarang he used to hack into the Brain's transmission. Suddenly, the skull-faced metal man disappears from the computer terminal, leaving only static behind him. Jamming his ability to communicate with, and blow up, Batman.

Above, the rumbling finally turns into true noise until finally, an explosion penetrates the ceiling with a friendly, welcoming voice accompanying it. "Master Bruce!"

"I'm here Alfred," He responds, putting X0-1 over his shoulder and taking back his grappling gun. "Prepare to Fulton me and a passenger, this whole place is about to go to hell so make it quick."

"Understood, sir!"

Zooming into the cave created by Alfred's bombing, Batman spots a red blinking light dozens of feet up and with a final pull of the trigger, launches himself and X0-1 into the air and out of the room just as it starts to explode. The two hooks, one from the gun and one from the Batwing converge midway, propelling the two of them through the crumbling, exploding cave with speeds fast enough to almost tear Batman's arm off.

Rocks smash and cut all over his body, the heat of the exploding laboratory below burns at his ankles, but in a matter of seconds, Batman finds himself back into the castle then in the air just as the final burst of flame roars at his heels. As he's pulled back into the plane, Batman takes one look back at castle Hassenstadt. A fortress capable of repelling any outside threat falls to one from within. Often, those kinds of attacks can be the absolute worst.

Stay tuned for more chapters in this series! While you're at it, check out some of the other DC Redux titles in this bold, new universe such as , Green Lantern: The Book of Oa, The Flash: Incandescent Legacy, Green Arrow: KIA or Wonder Woman: Man, Woman, Bullet, and 21st Century Super-Man!


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